Review By Kayleigh
Buckle up! This is a twisty addictive ride into the lives of the rich, famous and dead.
Favourite Quote:
“What was that?” I whisper.
Goosebumps prickle my arms as we both approach the window. Beyond the terrace, all we can see is ocean and sky. There’s nobody back there.
Goodreads Synopsis:
The wedding of Radhika Singh and Raj Joshi, a weeklong affair at a luxury resort in Cabos, isn’t just going to be the event of the season—it will also mark the union of two highly influential and wealthy Indian-American families. No expense will be spared for what Radhika and Raj have coined “R&R,” a week of rest, relaxation, and celebrating their love.
Shaylee “Shay” Kapoor is just an outsider, but she just so happens to be dating Raj’s best friend, Caleb Prescott III, and is sucked into this world of wealth and excess. But on the morning the wedding festivities are supposed to begin, the resort’s wedding coordinator Daniela makes a frightening announcement: Raj and Radhika are dead, gunshots to the head.
Chaos descends on the hotel as the guests are turned away or sent home. Shay stays by Caleb’s side as the investigation starts to unfold, family and close friends grieve, and accusations run wild. The police believe the murders are a drug cartel hit.
But even if it was a cartel hit, even if the murderer somehow got past the resort’s security, the hotel room doors have state-of-the-art locks. There was no way for the murderer to slip into the room without a key. And only the sister of the bride, Zara; the best men, Caleb and Sean; and the wedding coordinator, Daniela, have keys.
Shay may be an outsider—and she definitely has secrets of her own—but she may be the only person with enough perspective to untangle everyone’s lies, and discover why anyone would want the bride and groom dead. . .
The Plus One is glorious in its excess and mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed delving into the lives of the very rich and very famous. I feel like this is kind of a blend of Crazy Rich Asians, Succession and Agatha Christie in the best way. As a reader we are thrown into Shaylee’s perspective when she shows up in Mexico to the wedding of the year, where her boyfriend is the best man. The twist? The bride and groom are discovered dead. Shaylee has her own secrets and reasons for being at the wedding and they blend and bleed into the secrets the two wealthy families are hiding. I loved how fast the book began, and all the twists and turns it threw at me. It almost felt overwhelming and suffocating, and I feel like it did a good job at making the reader feel the pressure the characters are under.
Throughout the book we also get some flashbacks from Shaylee that help us understand how she came to be involved with her wealthy boyfriend Caleb. Like I said, everyone has secrets in this story, and I kind of wish there had been another POV or two – it would have been fascinating to get into a couple other characters’ heads to better understand their motives and also flesh them out. There’s some secondary characters that I really wanted to know more about. However, I really liked Shaylee’s character: She’s strong, opinionated, naive and open about her own wants and needs. You can’t fully trust her, but then, there really isn’t a reliable person in the story. Everyone has their own version of the truth. There’s a lot of big subjects that we tackle in this story through Shaylee: wealth and identity, drug trafficking, love and obsession, which keep this story from being too frothy.
I loved the setting: most of the book takes place at an exclusive resort in Mexico. It was a gorgeous and lush backdrop to the darkness of the murder and the investigations that occurred afterwards. I’m a sucker for a lock-door mystery and S. C. Lalli uses technology so perfectly in this story to explain how access was limited to a select group of people who could have access to the groom’s rooms. Sometimes I find technology clutters up a modern mystery, but it worked so well in this story.
The Plus One is a fabulous romp through the rich and famous, and an analysis into what the wealthy can get away with. The question is, if you’re rich enough, can you get away with murder?
Thank you HarperCollins Canada for the ARC in return for an honest review.
